The poem about Minoa
wasn’t about Minoa only.
Another word.
A mystery word.
Not mother of Minoa,
medicines of Minoa
or
magic of Minoa.
No.
Although
any of these
seem valid,
perfectly fine.
Yes.
I’ll stash them someplace.
For the event, in the event, of requiring
a possible, future
mystery word.
To create angels
Is to slice pie and name wedges:
difficult angles of light preserved in heart’s jelly
teenaged crushes trapped diagonally
undirected love felt in the presence of music
infatuation without object
movement in the skull
turtles waking in the mind’s mud
grape cluster the past becomes if artfully remembered
not images
but the script under them
negative space written in spelling errors
negligence that amends the soul
a family of perspectives driving a cumulative death
into the oncoming traffic
whole note in a black triangle on a blue background
disappearances denting the air
weather not noticed by the self absorbed
ignited visions
kissed ashes
barrel in the cellar
parallel fermentation of grape juice and darkness
the strong red taste of every humanizing event
stolen hour at the church dance
when a hard father’s daughter meets the one
who steals her from home
mines and quarries dug with the eyes
dream’s mailman
slipping letters through the slot
the white surrounding this
word
Luciano Iacobelli is a Toronto poet, publisher and editor. From 2007 to 2019 he was involved with Quattro books as both publisher and editor. He still runs a micropress entitled Lyricalmyrical press, specializing in hand made poetry chapbooks. As an author, he has published 6 full length books of poetry, his most recent book DOLOR MIDNIGHT was published in 2018 and deals with the subject of gambling. His next book, NOCTOGRAMS is due to be published in the fall of 2020 and deals with the subject of night and transformation.
Prologue begins THE ANGEL NOTEBOOK (Seraphim Editions, 2007)
Yes and the form once liberated from the laws of physics
and the conventions of decor can create its own ungrounded, untethered place
in the viewer’s imagination…
stimulating synaptic firing and creating new neuropathways
with much the same vitality as lyrical music and dance.
The discovery of, as well as through, Klee and Miro
thus frees the apprehending subject from the representational,
its associative shackles on the one hand, while on the other,
offering refuge
from the psychological desolation many people suffer
when confronted by pure abstraction.
My mother, forever painting under great tutelage:
Arthur Lismer, Kryunsic, Toppham-Brown,
introduced me to both Klee and Miro
before my soul-crushing experience of grade school.
I found as well in Calder’s mobiles, a similar approach to the form,
at once animated and authentic.
I like in your work, the agreement between image delineation and colour choices.
I too am drawn to the language of blue, an entire lexicon unto itself.
Its relationship to white and near-whites — eggshell, plaster, bone
in juxtaposition with material expressions of light such as mustard and yellow ochre,
generate a synergy of comfort for the viewer so the eye feels at home and lingers,
as one might on a desert retreat.
Founder/Curator/Host of the Toronto Urban Folk Art Salon, TG Hamilton has been published in numerous Canadian and international lit.reviews/anthologies. His poem suite El Marillo won 1st prize in the 2018 Big Pond Rumours Chapbook Contest; his book Panoptic (Aeolus House 2018) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Gerald Lampert Award; The Mezzo Soprano Dines Alone was selected for the distinguished John B. Lee Signature Series (Hidden BrookPress 2020). Dr. Hamilton’s MA Thesis (Inside the Words 1984) and PhD dissertation (A Poetics of Possibility, 2001) reflect his lifelong passion for poetry.
Painting by Steven McCabe, done the other day. Water-soluble graphite pencil & acrylic paint + watercolour paint in an 8.5″ X 11″ sketchbook. The Naples Yellow turned ochre-ish blending with graphite.
Since my last activity on this blog
A year and a half ago
I edited a novel (now @ 2nd draft),
And wrote & edited Meme-Noir
(Quattro Books, 2019).
Meme-Noir, as you might guess, is a play on memoir.
I emailed myself stories and anecdotes
Over an eight year period.
During discussions with the publisher (then),
For now the company has been sold,
I experienced a moment of revelation.
Luciano Iacobelli looked over my first ten pages
And said,
‘No, no, no, no, no.’
‘No theme, no thesis,
Just give me the puzzle pieces.’
He gestured with his hands and said,
‘Constellations!’
I was left to interpret ‘constellations’ as I wished.
I came up with the idea of vignettes comprising constellations.
Each vignette in a constellation
Has one key word in common.
Each series of vignettes
Covers various time periods,
Within a constellation.
So, it’s a non-linear timeline.
I was fortunate to receive two excellent blurbs
For the back cover
by Dr. Jean Raffa & Pierre L’Abbe.
In weeks to come I will share excerpts from Meme-Noir
And once again, post poetic texts by exciting authors
Accompanied by my visual art.
Thank you for your visit.
PS. If there are advertisements on this page,
And there might be,
I will deal with that soon.
I did a new painting. With acrylic paint and water-soluble graphite. The size is 30″ X 30″. The day after it was finished I made three changes.
Working the woman’s body it became a tree body with a bird. To break up the vertical line of the cartouche I added a bird (looks like a blue jay) entering from the left. To delineate the ‘leaf-flower’ zapping the tadpole-comet-sperm sphere with its tongue I gave it a serpent’s eye, added a white line to the tongue and reworked the sphere.
A friend of mine from Romania refers to the accordion book above as a ‘cartouche.’ I feel like an archeologist discussing the cartouche in my painting. This cartouche contains a number of diagonals that lead the eye to her arm. The white of the cartouche jumps from her arm to the white of her face.
These photos are not professional quality but they do show decisions about content and composition.
In ‘real life’ the painting is not quite as turquoise but it’s also more vibrant with texture and depth. It shines brilliantly.
I will return to a regular posting schedule on this blog soon. My plan is to create linocut prints and small paintings on paper to go with poetry. My computer is slow now, older, and not syncing well with WordPress. I will put Photoshop files on a thumb drive to increase computing power.
When the situation hits reverse
When you sleep and the situation speaks in tongues
When you don’t have a seatbelt and you don’t have a car
Going backwards off a cliff is not such a bad plan.
You might start dancing and you might change hats
You might introduce yourself as somebody new
But you don’t have a car and you don’t want to steal
So you rise from the dead just to try it out.
And you’re not such a dunce – as you feel your way –
And you spin even more – and feel even more new.
I wrote this in a couple of minutes to the tune of Fates Right Hand by Rodney Crowell – sort of a country rap song from years ago. I always like personal transformation stories. Not that Fate’s Right Hand is a personal transformation story. But I guess the juxtaposition of these images signifies such a possibility.
When I was young and my mother even younger in the history of the world I stood one day looking at the rain outside the window and on the window.
And my mother did not speak to me of rain upon the sculptures at the Hoysaleshvara temple in Halebedu, Karnataka, SW India, carved in the 1200s of the common era. No. She said farmers need the rain.
And my mother did not speak to me of astronauts or ancient astronauts or vimanas sailing through rain and cloud. No. She said farmers need the rain.
And I believed her. I had no reason to not believe my mother speaking of rain.
For the cover of her book with a theme – dreams, running throughout the powerful, prophetic poems.
I selected the drawings from two sketchbooks filling simultaneously, slowly, sometimes on the subway, sometimes in a cafe.
I work in these sketchbooks, as well as accordion sketchbooks, on and off, sometimes obsessively & intricately, sometimes less so.
I love ink drawing and the history of ink drawings – the contrast of line, design. To be honest I don’t want to do ink drawings, it’s inescapable & too pleasurable. An addiction of sorts.
My early heroes were Aubrey Beardsley and later Jan Toorop.
Today I find myself mesmerized by the line of Pict or Runic art and the heavier B&W contrasts in lino & woodcuts.
I have a book from the early 1900s & the author is railing against modernity in ink drawings.
He’s right about traditional, technical skill but quite misses the point.
The quest to return to what was lost in our origins is not determined by accuracy in depiction.
But rather seeing the spirit of the thing.
Or what we imagine is the spirit of the thing.
Just before Jimi Hendrix played the Star Spangled Banner
A wave went through the crowd.
He’s here.
Sleeping girls with feet caked in mud stirred.
Boys asleep with long wet hair awoke.
He’s here.
Potheads spinning up looked down.
Potheads coming down looked up.
He’s here.
Country Joe and Buffalo Springfield and Melanie
saw something moving like a river & coming into view.
He’s here.
He spoke without using a mic.
Ask not what your country can remember for you.
Ask what you can remember for your country.
The crowd applauded and gave him a standing ovation.
‘Inauguration Day man,’ the guy next to me said.
I looked at him closely.
The pottery in the next to last image is of Cucuteni-Trypillian neolithic heritage. I thought it played off the idea of ‘pothead’ as well as being a vessel the motorcade passed through. The images superimposed over JFK in the third image are the Sri Yantra diagram and a detail from the Book of Kells representing JFK’s ancestry. JFK loved poetry and read for pleasure so these are perhaps fitting images of tactile and spiritual deep time.
I do not claim copyright on original images. I have created new, non-commercial artworks for the purpose of parody or commentary.
